Starred review from January 1, 2025
DEBUT Margot Bradley is a popular romance novelist with a devoted following and a secret: she doesn't actually believe in happily-ever-afters, even as she writes them for her beloved characters. After a failed engagement, she starts writing alternate, unhappy endings for her novels in a secret "Happily Never After" file. When the Happily Never After file is leaked during a livestream, Margot is in hot water and flees to a remote Alaskan lodge for six weeks to take a stab at switching genres by writing a romance-free murder mystery. There she meets Dr. Forrest Wakefield, who has recently moved back home from California to take care of his father, the ailing proprietor of the lodge. As Margot and Forrest slowly bond, they keep finding themselves in the middle of every single kind of romance-novel trope, of the sort Margot claims not to believe in. Fate seems to be pushing them together, but the question remains: can they overcome their fears about relationships before Margot leaves Alaska? VERDICT Lavine turns many of the common romance novel tropes on their heads in this stunning debut. Top-notch banter will have readers laughing out loud as they root for Margot to finally achieve her own happily-ever-after.--Whitney Kramer
Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2025
In Alaska to escape her angry fans and write a murder mystery, a popular romance author finds the one thing she never expected: a chance for her own Happily Ever After. Margot Bradley is known for her swoony love stories, but she doesn't actually believe in true love; she secretly writes different, bitter endings for her characters, which she keeps in a document titled Happily Never After. When her computer is hacked and the file is released to the public, her fans turn on her and Margot finds herself canceled. To help her figure out what to do next, her sister, Savannah, who has a "cocktail of autoimmune disorders" and lives with Margot, books her a six-week stay at an Alaskan lodge--Margot had been planning to write a romance set in Alaska, but now she can take that trip to research a pivot, instead. When she arrives, Margot quickly realizes that not only is she in for a much more remote and rugged adventure than she'd expected, but the lodge's proprietor seems to have walked right off the pages of one of her books. Dr. Forrest Wakefield has returned home to Alaska to care for his ailing father even though he was on the brink of a major breakthrough in cancer research back in Los Angeles. Now he spends his time working as his father's personal physician and leading the guests on outdoorsy excursions. Forrest vowed to never get romantically involved with a guest, but his attraction to Margot keeps growing until it becomes impossible to ignore. This debut romance is beautifully written, nicely balancing humor and heat with realistic drama and conflict. Lavine is aiming for a meta-romance as Margot finds herself falling into various trope situations, but while these scenes are often funny, the book isn't doing anything new with those tropes and they sometimes feel shoehorned in. Margot and Forrest's roles as caretakers to their relatives, however, ground the story in deeper emotion and lead to refreshing attitude shifts and insights for the characters. An overstuffed rom-com with strong emotional depth.
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